Awesome Spotlight: NEWT Miami

February 12, 2016

By admin

Sometimes a brilliant idea needs a little push from the right person as a catalyst for creation. That’s what Miami’s Awesome Foundation chapter execute month after month with a yearly round of $1,000 grants for the city’s budding creators and entrepreneurs. From community projects to tech start-ups, Awesome dedicates genuine care and effort into bettering each of our home’s cultural pillars. We’re excited to begin highlighting their vast success in a new series of spotlights, starting with NEWT Miami.

Back in January of last year, Dejha Carrington and her team presented a project that would change the face of Miami’s skyline…literally. She wanted to give the now infamous dancing girl on the InterContinental Hotel a much-needed break, but created an entire experiential movement that rocked the city to the core with something it had never seen before: performative architecture. One step below dancing buildings, she paired a specially created orchestral piece written by her partner, Kelly Nunes with a 19-story LED wall that danced to bright colors and geometric shapes for 5 days last November.

The animated symphony transformed a living, moving part of Miami’s skyline, seen throughout the city as well as online at projectnewt.com, into an artwork for live-listening. Given the InterContinental’s visibility, one could sit on the bay, log onto the website on their phone to hear the music, and enjoy the show… a temporary musical planetarium. On its opening night, attendees could take in the entire experience paired with a live performance of the piece by the always-wonderful, Nu Deco Ensemble. It also debuted alongside a series of other events and programming like silent yoga and morning lectures, content that hit every significant cultural pillar in Miami.

Many times a project can fall into someone’s lap full of promise and full of hope yet never be seen into fruition. NEWT Miami was visible throughout the entire city and is still serving as a conversational springboard exemplifying ways in which the arts can foster a city’s overall growth, utilizing existing architecture and programming to create new ventures and ideas. The movement was captured by big fish outlets like Vice, Miami New Times, The Herald and many more. Now that’s a successful grant project, if you ask us.

You can watch the performance in its entirety below, and maybe look up and observe the building above you for a change, can they too be turned into an art installation? Did you ever think you could have that kind of thought?